Certainly not an ideal situation to be in, with the prospect of him burning up in the atmosphere of a gas giant in his immediate future if he didn’t change course.

Fortunately for him, this situation was one that had been – sort of – planned for.

“Though I might have preferred just being on target in the first place,” he grunted as he brought up his railgun, calculating what he hoped was the ideal angle.

He supposed it was all rather inconsequential in the end though. He was going to have to decelerate somehow, no matter what happened. Being off target had just added another variable to that equation.

So now it was just a matter of timing really, as he drifted ever closer to the massive ship. Ideally, he might have started making course corrections sooner, but that would be demonstrating to the Maw’s sensors that he was most assuredly not a piece of space debris, which would have resulted in the rather menacing laser pod that was attached to the front of the ship reducing him and the Ares to their component atoms.

The armor of an exo was tough – relative to most infantry based weapon systems. It was not however, ship-grade tough.

So he had to wait, until he’d drifted ‘under the guns’ of the transport ship. Which fortunately for his nerves, did not take long, as he watched the massive scarred leviathan of metal grow so large that it eclipsed his vision. Most importantly, he could no longer see the very front of the ship. And if he couldn’t see the laser-pod, the laser pod couldn’t see him.

So he fired.

It was a little strange, to know just how powerful a gun he was firing, but to feel or hear next to nothing. Space robbed him of the sound of the gun, and the exo’s mechanical strength robbed him of the recoil. Hell, there was barely anything to see beyond a tiny smattering of sparks as electro-magnetic energy rippled down the twin prongs of the wrist mounted gun.

Sighing just a little at the anti-climax, he nonetheless held down the trigger. The weapon was designed for automatic fire and would continue to do so until it ran out of ammunition or the twin prongs that served as the ‘barrel’ melted.

Not that Jason intended to be firing for that long. Even if it was only in small increments, he could feel himself decelerating.

It wasn’t exactly easy to keep himself from spinning like a top as he did so, but he was keeping the gun as close to his center mass as possible, while occasionally making adjustments to compensate when his view veered from one side to the other. A task made simply difficult, rather than outright impossible, by the fact that the exo was doing most of the computing for him.

“Jason… are you using your primary weapon to… maneuver?” Tisi’s voice came rather incredulously through his HUD.

The sudden noise, after nearly a minute of total silence beyond his labored breathing, jolted his hand slightly, sending him spinning. A quick twist and a burst in the other direction arrested most of it, but he still felt his heart skip a beat at the near total loss of control.

“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth, ignoring the bead of sweat that ran down his temple. “And I can assure you, it’s not as easy as I’m making it look.”

So please be quiet, went unsaid.

He supposed he couldn’t have been too surprised that Tisi could ‘see’ what he was doing. The Whisker’s sensors were still operational after all.

I can only hope that the Maw’s aren’t as fine tuned, he thought as he finally got on course for landing, watching the surface of the massive ship rushing up to meet him.

A view accompanied by a distinct sensation of vertigo to be sure. He wasn’t a guy who particularly considered himself to be afraid of heights, but the sight sent a shot of adrenaline running though him regardless. Because no matter how you sliced it, he’d been ‘falling’ for the last six minutes.

And now I’m about to make impact with the floor, he thought grimly.

Which was going to hurt. The suit was designed to take some heavy landings, but he knew he was going to be feeling it regardless.

A feeling that was almost immediately vindicated as he slammed into the ship feet first, at a speed more often seen in low speed vehicle collisions than controlled landings.

“Jason? Jason!? Are you ok?”

He barely registered Tisi’s concerned shouts. His focus was predominantly taken up by the aftershock that came with most of his internal organs bouncing around and slamming into other bits of his insides.

“Ow,” he wheezed finally.

“Thank the Empress, you’re alive.”

He straightened up slowly. “Sort of wish I wasn’t right now.”

Of course, he didn’t have long to dwell on that. He needed to move. Quickly.

As evidenced by Tisi’s voice taking on a definite hint of alarm. “Jason, we’re getting an incoming call from Hela.”

He could imagine they were. From the merchant’s perspective, something had just launched from the Whisker and impacted her ship.

“Stall her,” he grunted as he started moving across the surface of the massive ship, vibrations running up his legs with every massive stamp of his mag-locked boots.

“How?” Tisi asked, a little frantically.

“I don’t know, tell it was just some trash!”

“You think she’s going to buy that?” Tisi asked rhetorically. “That we happened to fire some trash out the airlock? Right now? Trash that just so happened to impact her ship? That changed course mid-flight?”

Jason wracked his brain, well aware that with every millisecond that passed, Hela would be getting more suspicious about them not picking up. It wasn’t like Tisi had anything else that should be taking up her time.

“Tell her it was a… battery!” He shouted, as the idea struck him. “One that was damaged in her initial attack and that we had to vent because it was becoming unstable.”

Which would provide some justification as to why ‘it’ changed course on the approach. Explosive leakage as the battery’s casing failed.

“You think she’ll buy it?” Tisi asked contemplatively.

Jason grunted as he continued moving toward the front of the Maw. “She only has to humor you for… a minute or so.”

Which was still slightly longer than ideal. He was rushing as fast he could, but his mag-locked boots meant his current gait had more in common with a spirited power walk than a true sprint. Even at his limited pace, and with the suit helping him, he could feel sweat forming on his forehead from the exertion involved.

A click in his ear told him Tisi had cut communications, presumably to bullshit as best she could to Hela.

Which was why he sighed as he barely made it a few more steps before the laser pod ahead of him fired, the normally invisible stream of ultraviolet light highlighted a bright blue in his vision by the advanced sensors in his suit. It lanced toward the Whisker’s aft, melting through the ships armor plating in moments.

Even from this distance he could see the explosion that bloomed for just a moment from the ship’s hull as the oxygen within whatever section had been hit ignited under the superheated conditions it suddenly found itself in.

He swore.

Either Tisi wasn’t as good at bluffing as he’d hoped, or Hela had grown impatient. Both options were equally viable. Neither were good.

And everyone should be fine so long as they remained on the bridge, he thought resolutely.

Which they should have been because it had been an option – until that second shot hit the ship. No one had any critical tasks that needed to be completed in other parts of the ship, so they’d have remained on the bridge fearing exactly what had just happened.

Of course, the problem lay in the fact that ships weren’t designed to have holes put in them. They reacted poorly. Which meant that repair teams would need to be sent out now to repair systems as best they could, and more importantly, ensure the initial damage didn’t result in more damage.

Which meant that if Hela fired another shot, there was a decent chance that Kernathu, Yaro, Assisse or Scales could find themselves in the line of fire.

Which is why it’s fortunate she’s not going to get that opportunity, he thought with some relief as he finally reached his destination, sweat pouring off him.

A laser pod was called such because that was what it looked like. A bulbous metal pod embedded in the front of the ship. Barely more than a meter in diameter, it was pretty crazy to think that such a small thing was capable of such destruction.

It was also the Maw’s only remaining intact armamenet. He’d passed two other pods on the way over, each melted into so much slag by whatever conflict the ship had found itself in before it had arrived here.

Three laser pods seemed a pretty small number of weapons for such a large ship, and in truth it was. He knew for a fact that the massive behemoth could have sustained a number of other weapon systems. Unfortunately for Hela, the law was quite clear on the subject. Only the military were allowed to possess ‘warships’.

What few armaments the Maw did possess flew in the face of that law. Which meant that they’d have to have been hidden. Glancing about, Jason could see latches on the ship’s hull where false plating had fallen away to reveal the weapons.

Which might explain why she was able to get away, he realized. Whoever came after her probably wasn’t expecting the Maw to be armed.

Even if that armament was pretty paltry relative to the ship’s size – a consequence of said weapon systems needing to be hidden.

Gritting his teeth, Jason placed both hands on the metal pod before him, locating the thin seam in the metal plates that protected the relatively delicate focusing lenses within. And once he did, he started to pull.

Despite knowing intellectually that his suit was more than capable of the act, it still felt a little surreal to have metal bend and warp beneath his hands as he pried the pod’s metal casing open, revealing the transparent lense of a laser emitter beneath. Taking a breath he, he brought the railgun up, firing a burst into the delicate machinery.

In moments, the weapon system became little more than sparking useless scrap.

“Looks like the Maw is now… toothless,” he said triumphantly. Then he frowned as he realized no one was around to hear his epic witticism.

At which point he nearly jumped out of his skin as his comm crackled to life.

“Jason, what did you just do?” Tisi asked. “Hela was halfway through a sentence before she cut herself – and the comm link – off.”

“You guys were still talking?” he couldn’t help but ask. “After she shot at you?”

“Yes,” Tisi said flatly. “She was impressing upon me the need to send you over within the next few minutes. And that she was incredibly skeptical of our claims of a deteriorating battery. Which was why she was just in the act of threatening me with another lance strike when she suddenly cut herself off.”

“Well, I’m not surprised.” Jason grinned. “Given that the Maw has just been rendered toothless.”

Haha, he’d managed to use it after all.

“You damaged her weapons?” Tisi asked, to his muted disappointment as she ignored his clever wordplay.

“More like mulched,” he said, still managing to retain some level of glee at his plan’s success.

“That… that’s great!” Tisi said, relief clear in her voice.

It was. Very great. With that done, the Maw could no longer threaten the Whisker. Now they just needed to…

“If only our weapons were still working,” Tisi lamented, cutting off his triumphant monologue.

“They aren’t?” he asked franticly, feeling like ice water had just slouced through his guts.

Tisi sighed over the comms. “That last shot apparently melted a pretty critical power juncture. Kernathu’s trying to fix it, but…”

It wouldn’t be repaired within the next hour. By which point Hela would be long gone. More to the point, the people he’d been trying to save would be gone too.

“Fuck!” he swore aloud. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

His plan was now in ruins. He’d been hoping to have the Whisker damage the Maw’s engines so that it couldn’t jump to phase. That way they’d be stuck here too - until reinforcements from Gurathu – or wherever – showed up.

That wouldn’t be happening now.

Still, this could be salvaged.

“Alright, we just need to load Assisse and Scales onto…”

“Shuttle's slagged too,” Tisi interrupted grimly. “We’re pretty sure that was what Hela was actually aiming for. She just happened to get lucky and take out our weapons too.”

“Fuck,” he hissed.

Tisi’s grunt of agreement told him that she didn’t necessarily disagree with his summary of the situation. Her tone turned commiserating.

“You gave it a good run Jason,” she said slowly. “You might have just saved a number of our crews lives – even if I wish that you’d done so in a different manner... or kept me in the loop. Something we will be discussing when you’re back on board.”

Jason just stared off into space as Tisi kept talking. Mostly he was wondering how Hela planned to collect him if she'd just slagged the Whisker's only shuttle?

Does the Maw have it's own shuttles?

“You’ve done all you can though,” she continued. “We both know that the weapons on your exo won’t even peel the paint off the armor around Hela’s thrusters.”

He nodded, not being able to bring himself to disagree. He’d been rather fortunate that the laser pod had been rather delicate once he’d peeled open it’s protective dome. A fact he likely owed to the fact that said weapons had needed to be hidden, and thus had been rather minimalist in design. By contrast, the thrusters on a transport ship were expected to be as sturdy as humanly possible, given that the ship’s only real - legal - recourse when under attack was to flee.

Or at least, that’s how the theory goes, he thought as he glanced at the trashed laser pod next to him.

At some point during his introspection, Tisi had apparently started talking again.

“-know it’s risky, but you’ll need to jump back to the Whisker before Hela jumps to phase. You’ll need to use your railgun to guide yourself in again, but I’m positive-”

“I’m going inside,” he interrupted.

Silence reigned on the line for a few seconds. He half expected a series of denials to come his way from his captain, but when she did speak again, she surprised him.

“She’s got a small army of militiawomen in there,” she said, dangerously calm. “That exo you’re in is tough, but it has limits. Limit’s you’ll reach long before you make it to the bridge, or the engine room, from the airlock.”

Jason was already walking as he responded.

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “Which is why it’s fortunate that I won’t be traveling from the airlock.”

Whoever had attacked the Maw had placed a bunch of convenient holes in the ship’s hull after all. He’d be an idiot not to take advantage.

“I’m also guessing that she left Gurathu in a hurry,” he said, as he weightlessly sank into a nearby hole, gripping the slagged metal plating for leverage as gravity suddenly took hold off him. Artificial gravity could be a real mindfuck like that. “Which means she might have left a few of her people behind.”

“It’s too much of a risk,” Tisi said, still calm but with a hint of desperation in her tone. “I’m ordering you to return to the Whisker.”

He switched off his comms - cutting off the woman’s entirely reasonable demands. He did feel a little bad about it though, as he walked through one of the Maw’s all too familiar internal corridors.

Unfortunately, he’d had to cut her off, given that if he’d continued to listen, he knew he’d have been tempted to obey. To return to the relative safety of the Whisker.

And he knew he’d hate himself for that. For leaving who knew how many people to be sold off to the Coalition. So, he had to keep going. For better or worse.

The corridor’s lights were still working, so if it wasn’t for the fact that the place was eerily silent but for his own breathing and the thump of his mechanical boots on the deck, he’d have thought the place was little different from that time all those months ago when he’d first come aboard the transport.

Of course, the fact that the bulkhead doors are sealed does somewhat ruin the illusion, he thought with a hint of nervous humor, bringing his weapon up as he approached his first obstacle. Though, to call it an obstacle might be a bit of an exaggeration. I’m in an exo after all.

The maw was ostensibly a civilian vessel. The bulkhead doors were designed to seal off areas that had been exposed to vacuum, not invaders. Which was why it offered little resistance as his metallic fingers sunk into the metal, tearing the door open in a single smooth motion.

Then he stepped aside, as the rush of escaping air that accompanied the breach was entirely expected.

…The surprised crew woman who flew out with it, less so.